Why can't I withdraw HNS or BTC on Namebase Pro?

Updated 3 months ago
by
Tieshun Roquerre

Namebase needs to keep HNS and BTC withdrawals turned off until sufficient hash power has built up on Handshake to protect against double spend attacks/reorgs. The risk of reorgs during the first few weeks of launch is too high and the bigger risk is around block 2016 (check hnsxplorer.com for the current block). Block 2016 is when all transactions on Handshake are enabled, and whoever mines that block gets 88 blocks worth of mining rewards.

Miners are going to fight to reorg that block and it’ll likely be highly volatile. Until Handshake stabilizes, we will keep HNS and BTC withdrawals disabled on Namebase Pro. We will re-enable the HNS and BTC withdrawals when Handshake stabilizes later this month.

To clarify further, here’s an example of the attack that can happen if we enable withdrawals now: someone mines HNS into Namebase and sells it for BTC (withdrawing it), then the chain forks and the HNS is no longer in Namebase, but the BTC is gone. That can happen right now because Handshake is still only a week old, but as more hash power comes online it becomes more and more difficult to do that attack, so we’d be able to enable withdrawals then.